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Rising demand for meat and resource constraints are pushing China to look overseas. At the same time, China's food security continues to be haunted by food safety scandals - from melamine-laced milk to adulterated meat. These issues are opening up new opportunities for U.S.-China business. read more

While Chinese officials make full frontal regulatory attacks on smog, untreated sludge, an often toxic byproduct from sewage treatment, continues to quietly spread into groundwater and contaminate soil and food.

The China Environment Forum is proud to introduce our second interactive infographic: a map of China’s “dam rush” in its southwest region. The map depicts the impressive scale of the country’s dam build-up to tap the hydropower potential of the rich river systems in the southwest.

Thanks to improved smallholder farms and land diversity, “China has been able to meet grain production targets year after year despite large portions of the country stricken by drought,” Boyle says in an interview with the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

Chinese pollution and western consumption are linked. In January 2014, a tri-national team of researchers released a study showing that much of the pollution from heavy industries concentrated in eastern China stems from export production. Some of this pollution drifts across the Pacific Ocean and is deteriorating the air quality over the western United States.

By 2020, coal consumption in China is projected to increase by 30 percent, and already, 20 percent of water withdrawn in the country goes to coal mining, processing, and cooling of coal-fired power plants. The water intensity of the coal industry is a significant quandary for a country that is already facing a water scarcity crisis (water availability per capita is one-quarter the global average).

CEF is proud to announce that we are launching our first interactive infographic – a map of China’s West-East Electricity Transfer Project. The map underscores China’s energy and water imbalances and the looming choke point China faces in terms of water, food, and energy security. The map also illustrates how consumer goods made in China’s factories along its eastern coast are powered by coal and hydropower in the country’s western provinces.